Third-place Lenny Martinez reflects on a solid Tour de Romandie: 'I felt better every day'

Tadej Pogačar stood head and shoulders above everyone else in the Tour de Romandie. Florian Lipowitz was a worthy second, and behind them, Lenny Martinez came out on top in the battle for the final podium place with Jørgen Nordhagen. The Frenchman had the young Visma Norwegian on his radar, and paid his tributes afterwards.

Nordhagen had made it his stated goal — the Visma talent wanted to throw everything at the final stage to knock the Frenchman off the third step of the podium. Martinez, however, did not crack and came in at the same time as the Norwegian. The Frenchman sealed his podium place and was more than content with it.

"Honestly, I felt better every day during this Tour de Romandie," Martinez told CyclingProNet afterwards. "Today I was at my best. It shows that I improve as the week goes on. The team did fantastic work today — they protected me well and handled the climb well. It was really good to see them; it gave me a lot of strength."

In the finale the climber from Cannes waited for the moment many others were also waiting for. "Towards the end I knew Tadej would attack. I wanted to try to follow him, but I was a little afraid of blowing up, like yesterday. He was a bit stronger, together with Lipowitz," he said honestly. In the final overall, the gap to the German runner-up would be more than two minutes.

The Frenchman ultimately held just seven seconds over fourth-placed Nordhagen. "I was very wary of Nordhagen — I didn't want him to take my podium place," Martinez explained. Despite being just 21 years old, the peloton clearly knows exactly how seriously to take the Visma talent.

Third place secured, then, for Martinez — who is having a strong year all round. A stage win at Paris-Nice and second place in the overall at the Tour of Catalonia have already been added to his tally. "For me it has been perfect. I had expected to do good things, and that is exactly what happened at Paris-Nice. I'm happy to have won there, especially for Jonas."

"I rode a good classification at Catalonia, and here too," the Frenchman continued. "I've also had a good start to the season in one-day races. For now things are going well — and now I'm going to do two weeks of altitude training ahead of the Tour of Switzerland and the Tour de France, to get good results there too."